ok, so by now we all know that there are some bits of hardware inside the edge that are not yet enabled. I will kick off this thread by listing the ones we know about already and I'm hoping that we can work out exactly what's inside our beloved devices.

I can confirm that there is no GPS, no 3G modem, and no antenna for either in the WiFi eDGe. Sorry. There is an accelerometer which we are not using, but that is mostly because we could not come up with a reliable way to use it to reorient the screens on a device with two screens that might be back to back, and might be getting used right side up or upside down. We almost got there, but like I said...not reliable enough. Maybe one of you clever folks can find a good use for it.

dontpanic, I suggest you to disable "auto-rotation" 'cos it good for mobile (but also distorb some users) and useless for device such EE. But on other hand there's many apps which use accelometer data (games, health e.t.c.). So imho enabling accelometr and disabling rotation (at least by default) is a best way.

Also, many apps doesn't work on EE 'cos it missing getPointerCount functions (Landroid/view/MotionEvent;.getPointerCount and so on). Yep, I know that EE hasn't multitouch capabilities, but if you hardcode to return "1", it will double the amount of apps which will work on EE

p.s.
Also it'll be very good if you add an config file for behavior of e-ink app switch button (wheel)... Currently it'll allow only to switch between Journal and Reader, but I'm thinking about porting Chrome and OpenOffice to e-ink (in additional to Android-on-eink). And currently there's no way to run something on e-ink untill stopped Journal and Reader first, and no way to run custom eink software without starting it using LCD display. So a little config file will help a lot.

dontpanic, I suggest you to disable "auto-rotation" 'cos it good for mobile (but also distorb some users) and useless for device such EE.

I think some people would welcome the feature of autorotation by just turning the eDGe. enTourage said they were almost there. I'm sure someone in the community will be able to finish off or come up with their own reliable way to do it. After all enTourage had a deadline for hardware release and this was probably seen as low priority initially and just hasn't been revisited. As I've said before, the real plus of all this is that the hardware IS there. The software will catch up eventually now the open source community is available.

Quote:

Originally Posted by robot

Also, many apps doesn't work on EE 'cos it missing getPointerCount functions (Landroid/view/MotionEvent;.getPointerCount and so on). Yep, I know that EE hasn't multitouch capabilities, but if you hardcode to return "1", it will double the amount of apps which will work on EE

Way to go robot ! The benefit of open source community effort exemplified right there. I'm sure this is something enTourage can squeeze in to the next release (not wishing to encourage feature-creep). I'm sure a drastic increase in the number of supported apps is a major marketing feature for what seems like minimal effort.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dontpanic

We almost got there, but like I said...not reliable enough. Maybe one of you clever folks can find a good use for it.

A gauntlet, which I'm sure will be picked up by somebody. It's an important piece of hardware in this day and age (people almost expect one nowadays) and to just have it sitting there in the eDGe unused seems a great shame.

p.s.
Also it'll be very good if you add an config file for behavior of e-ink app switch button (wheel)... Currently it'll allow only to switch between Journal and Reader, but I'm thinking about porting Chrome and OpenOffice to e-ink (in additional to Android-on-eink). And currently there's no way to run something on e-ink untill stopped Journal and Reader first, and no way to run custom eink software without starting it using LCD display. So a little config file will help a lot.

I can confirm that there is no GPS, no 3G modem, and no antenna for either in the WiFi eDGe. Sorry. There is an accelerometer which we are not using, but that is mostly because we could not come up with a reliable way to use it to reorient the screens on a device with two screens that might be back to back, and might be getting used right side up or upside down. We almost got there, but like I said...not reliable enough. Maybe one of you clever folks can find a good use for it.

DP

I can't imagine it would be that hard to add a Settings option that controls how the accelerometer is interpreted. For instance, the user could set the accelerometer to reorient LCD only, or e-ink only, or both in the same way (if it's in the two screen book layout), or both opposite (if the screens are folded back on each other), or neither screen (which is the "setting" we have now).

Chubulor. there's two displays, and only one accelometr, so in order to properly rotate the screen you need to know layout of displays (are they flipped, closed, back2back, reverse-flipping e.t.c.) it's not a real problem, but makes things a little harder.

On other hand, I personally dislike autorotation, 'cos for example sometime you need to view an image which is vertical from horisontal point of view. Or some false positive rotation which is also not a problem, but it takes time to rotate in normal position.

Chubulor. there's two displays, and only one accelometr, so in order to properly rotate the screen you need to know layout of displays (are they flipped, closed, back2back, reverse-flipping e.t.c.) it's not a real problem, but makes things a little harder.

On other hand, I personally dislike autorotation, 'cos for example sometime you need to view an image which is vertical from horisontal point of view. Or some false positive rotation which is also not a problem, but it takes time to rotate in normal position.

I guess my point is, why not have a Settings option that lets you tell the Edge that you plan to have it folded or open for the purposes of autorotation? Then the software doesn't have to be written to determine the layout, it can just go by whatever the user chose in Settings. For instance, I rarely ever have the screens folded back against each other, as I'm usually using both screens, so it would be nice if I could just modify Settings once and then have the autorotation feature. True, it might be annoying to have to go back into settings every time you folded or un-folded your Edge, but anyone who finds it annoying should just be able to turn off autorotation completely.

You're absolutly right. But as for me, I prefer to made interface as simple as possible. On mobile autorotation is necessary 'cos they're limited both in screen size and number of hard keys. On edge we allready have both: the large display, and additional buttons to rotate the screen.

p.s. at first EE must to fix an bug which case to some apps running in default (horisontal) mode instead of current (vertical) mode. Allmost all photo\video apps has this bug.
p.p.s. and fix some apps running in small screen, which also takes a few lines of code to fix.